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The worst thing about being a woman

Originally posted at glosswatch

According to Shania Twain, the best thing about being a woman is “the prerogative to have a little fun.” Meanwhile, according to Caitlyn Jenner, the worst thing about being a woman is “figuring out what to wear” (hint: “men’s shirts, short skirts,” apparently).

Somewhere between these two extremes we find the entire range of female experience – or we would, were it not for the fact that female experience cannot be categorised in any way, shape or form. There are infinite variations thereof and to pin down anything at all is to exclude. Hence it turns out even Shania and Caitlyn are on dodgy ground. What about women who aren’t allowed to have fun? What about naturists? Not every woman wears clothes, Jenner, you bigot!

It’s all so difficult, isn’t it? As Tanya Modelski argued in Feminism without women “the once exhilarating proposition that there is no ‘essential’ female nature has been elaborated to the point where it is now often used to scare ‘women’ away from making any generalizations about or political claims on behalf of a group called ‘women’.” Modelski wrote this in 1991, long before feminists were being ordered, in the name of inclusion, to stop making connections between women as an oppressed class and the female body as a biological entity. Because sex is a construct, don’t you know? And reproductive difference is really, really hard to define. Indeed, it’s pure coincidence that people with penises seek to appropriate and control the reproductive labour of people without penises (it’s not as though the possession of a penis offers a massive fucking hint as to which side of the potential impregnator/impregnated divide one might fall on).